Poll: Do traction bars help out Mopar leaf springs or not

gregsdart said

Haviing raced since 1971, and with very little thought to what was happening at launch, i tried a number of things. Had i understood the math then, i may have come up with better solutions sooner. My first decent car was a charger with torqueflight, 440, 3000 stall, 4.30 gears, 28 x 9 slicks. Running 12.50s at 112 mph. A quick look at the math;
400 ft lb torque(?) X conerter (2xtorque) X 2.45 low x 4.30 rear gear equals 8428 ft pounds of force at the rear housing trying to twist the leafsprings. We needed serius shocks, and didn,t know it

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Now days i have twice the torque hitting the rear housing, 17,000 ft lbs. Do the math of a 30 inch ladderbar, and the shocks have to control 6800 lbs of pull at the hit. That is 3400 EACH. I am on my fourth shock upgrade on the car with the same 30 inch ladderbars. A mopar spring has a 20 inch front half, partially dampened by the back half of the springs. So consider that when you think of shocks. Also rear shackle angle and length make a big differance. Unclamped springs change things. Sometimes it is better to just launch at a lower rpm, and suddenly you have posted the fastest 60 ft time ever! I do not consider myself an expert at this stuff. The real Pros are WAY ahead of me